Iomega eGo 1TB USB 3.0 Portable Hard Drive Review

Several technology companies throughout history have been defined by a single product. Microsoft gained worldwide notoriety with Windows 95, Intel's Pentium processor boosted the company to new heights and many would argue that the iPod saved Apple from an untimely fate. For storage company Iomega, their claim to fame came in 1994 with the Zip drive, a disk-based storage system that filled the capacity gap between floppy disks and the rewritable optical disc that followed a few years later.

Although not as prominent a household name as it was a decade ago, Iomega still produces multiple consumer products covering a wide range of storage and networking needs. Today we'll be taking a look at the eGo 1TB USB 3.0 Portable Hard Drive, one of the latest additions to Iomega's portable storage line.

The eGo arrived in a small black cardboard box with a photo of the drive on the front and not much more on the reverse. Inside we found the drive itself, a quick start guide, and a single USB 3.0 cable. The cable is roughly 2' in length with one end featuring a Micro-B style connector and the other terminating into two standard USB connectors. Iomega includes two connectors should your older computer not have the ability to power the drive from a single USB 2.0 port. That said, the drive is fully backwards compatible with USB 2.0, though transfer rates are bound to reflect this.

The enclosure is offered in four different colors: Ruby Red, BlackBelt, Charcoal and Midnight Blue. All colors are available in 500GB and 1TB capacities, except the Charcoal version, which is oddly missing the 1TB option, and the BlackBelt is the only one hosting a 1.5TB drive. We received the Midnight Blue 1TB model which looks great, though the glossy blue finish will undoubtedly be susceptible to fingerprint smudges.

The drive is wrapped in a Power Grip Band that is reminiscent of the old Cingular logo. A single Micro-B USB 3.0 connector and an LED status indicator are on the top of the drive. The band features tiny metallic flakes that look more like unsightly particles than aesthetic enhancers. The soft rubber material could also offer a slight bit of shock protection. It is easily removable which is a plus since it tends to be a magnet for lint and other debris.

USB 3.0 support on the Iomega eGo provides faster performance but also the convenience of powering the drive from a single USB 3.0 port, an important feat if you plan to carry the drive around a lot. We will cover performance in better detail on the next page.

Software and Performance Testing

Included on the drive is a copy of Iomega Encryption Utility that utilizes AES 256-bit hardware encryption, which lets you password protect the drive to keep snooping eyes off your data. The software works as advertised and is easy to use, although it appears that whoever wrote the copy for the software isn't a native English speaker.

Besides that minor gripe, there is one issue with the bundled encryption software: it boots as a virtual optical drive when you plug the eGo into your computer and there is seemingly no way to remove it. If you plan to use the software, this point is moot. But if you despise a company forcing software down your throat, it'll certainly become an issue. Sure, you can disable autorun in Windows, but that could be an inconvenience if you happen to rely on the feature often.

Personally, this didn't bother me too much, but while checking out some user reviews around the net it appeared to be the most prominent complaint among owners of the drive.

Iomega also includes access to its Protection Suite software. The suite includes a 12 month subscription to Trend Micro Internet Security for PC or Trend Micro Smart Surfing for Mac, Roxio Retrospect Express backup software, MozyHome Online Backup service (2GB for free), Iomega QuikProtect backup software and v.Clone, a system imaging program. To download any of these programs, go to Iomega's download page and enter your email address with the serial number from your eGo.

I tested the Iomega eGo using the following hardware:

Intel Core i5 661 Processor
EVGA H55 Motherboard
Crucial Ballistix Tracer DDR3 2x 2GB
64GB Western Digital SiliconEdge Blue SSD
StarTech USB 3.0 PCI-E Adapter
Zalman HD 503 HTPC Case
Seasonic SS-460 X-Series 460w PSU
Windows 7 Home Premium

For benchmarking purposes, I used CrystalDiskMark 3.0, ATTO Disk Benchmark and SiSoft Sandra's Physical Disks test.

A real-world file transfer test was also performed, similar to the one we usually run on our notebook reviews. We used two different sets of files for the file transfer test. The first had 557 small MP3s that totaled 2.56GB, and the second was a single 2.52GB .rar file. The test consists of simply copying the files from the computer to the USB 3.0 enclosure and back, measuring how long the process takes on each.

Results from our testing can be found below.

Benchmark Results

	USB 2.0		USB 3.0
CrystalDiskMark 3.0	Read	Write	Read	Write
Sequential	34.23 MB/s	30.13 MB/s	97.80 MB/s	90.17 MB/s
512K	21.17 MB/s	29.09 MB/s	34.93 MB/s	35.46 MB/s
4K	0.409 MB/s	0.976 MB/s	0.420 MB/s	1.028 MB/s
4K QD32	0.491 MB/s	0.984 MB/s	0.509 MB/s	1.017 MB/s
Sandra Physical Disks Test
Drive Score (Higher is better)	30.75 MB/s		75.45 MB/s
Random Access Time (Lower is better)	795 ms		409 ms

USB 3.0 needs no introduction beyond this point. For external hard drives the additional bandwidth makes a world of difference, in this particular case almost tripling your throughput and making copying and reading files from the drive a breeze in comparison to older USB 2.0 drives.

Final Thoughts

Iomega has been offering eGo portable hard drives for a few years now, however the much welcomed addition of USB 3.0 translates into faster transfer speeds if the computers you use support the newer standard.

Externally, the enclosure is a bit bulkier than most 2.5" drives but the added thickness is attributed to increased shock protection. The glossy blue paint job on our review sample looks great but will undoubtedly attract fingerprints and smudges over time. The Power Grip Band adds additional shock protection and can be removed if you prefer how the drive looks without it.

The portable drive performed as expected in our benchmarks and real world testing, maxing out at around 90 MB/sec on writes and 45 MB/sec on reads. USB 3.0 is capable of much faster speeds, so it's safe to say we are hitting the bandwidth ceiling of the hard drive inside the enclosure.

Depending on where you stand about the eGo's "mandatory" encryption software, this could be the drive's Achilles heel or simply an added feature that you could take advantage of. The software boots as a virtual drive alongside the storage drive, and as mentioned before, there doesn't seem to be an easy way to remove it beyond disabling Windows' autorun. The software itself is solid and works as advertised, but there will always be those who are completely against software being forced upon them, and rightfully so.

With that out of the way, the Iomega eGo USB 3.0 portable drive is a viable and convenient USB 3.0 mobile storage solution. As of this writing, the eGo 1TB drive is available for $130 with a three-year warranty. In terms of value, it's $20-30 more than most USB 2.0 portable drives, and seems to be selling below or at around the same price of competing USB 3.0 capable drives from other vendors.

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